top o' the mornin' to ya!

Ok, so it's not actually morning. But I feel like if I'm going to post about Dublin, I should be in Irish mode, or something like that. I even had green nails for the trip! Unintentionally, of course. But still. Kind of fun.

So Dublin was great! Getting there was quite an experience, since I didn't necessarily take into account the time we would have to wake up when I booked our 8:10am flight...We were up bright and early at 4am to trek to the airport! Ouch. But we had a seamless morning of travel, which is always nice!


On the bus from the airport to city center. Happy faces!




Oh yeah. Let me introduce you to my brother! Did I mention he was coming to visit? What's that you say? Only about a million times? Oh. Right. Well, that's him!


You know how I love to eat? Well so does Jarrad. You know what Jarrad loves to eat? Bread.


Look at all that bread! He actually went to a cafe in the airport and asked for an entire baguette. They looked at him like he was crazy! Because he is, a little. That one baguette would have made 3 sandwiches, and he ate it all! Ok, I helped a little. It was pretty good bread.



nom nom nom






So once we got into the city, the bread had worn off. We decided to start off our day with a wonderfully nutritious meal...


See? Strawberry-rhubarb tart from the Queen of Tarts cafe! It's got my fruit servings! And there was a dollop of whipped cream on the side, which totally counts as dairy. Right? Yeah...

Regardless, it was delicious!







Jarrad had a chocolate fudge cake, which was pretty delish, too.













After our delicious and nutritious "lunch", we walked around the city for a bit. When we travel, we like to wander and explore and find things while wandering and exploring. No real plans, no real touristy stuff (for the most part), just lots of walking and food. We made two exceptions on this trip: Trinity College and the Guinness Storehouse. The Trinity campus was beautiful! And the Guinness tour was actually really cool. It was self-guided, which made it feel more like a museum exhibit and less like a tourist trap. 5 floors of Guinness history and brewing process, which is interesting in and of itself, but enhanced when you're touring with someone (aka Jarrad) who took beer brewing as a class in college. Jealous much?


Oh and the best part? Each entry ticket comes with a free pint at the Gravity Bar, on the top level of the building with a fantastic view of the city! They even make your beer pretty for you!

How cool is that? They put a shamrock design in your beer! You don't even notice them drawing it, they're that skilled. The coolest part about the shamrock was that we could still see it as the glass was drained! For some reason this was fascinating.






In the spirit of really wanting to go home (and being exhausted from wandering all day), we opted for the simplicity and convenience of NY-style pizza for dinner.

It was fabulous.

Don't worry, we ate plenty of classic Irish food as well! I just don't have pictures. Apparently eating this pizza was far more entertaining to me. I guess that makes sense, since we were eating NY pizza (yes, it's the same Ray's as NYC!) in Ireland.

Awesome.


All in all, a great trip! And if anyone ever goes to Dublin and is looking for a hostel, we stayed at the Four Courts hostel, which was pretty fab!

Ok, I'm tired of writing. And I have to feed my brother. He's on my top bunk and doesn't really feel like getting up. Go figure.